The Swedish CS:GO veteran Robin “flusha” Rönnquist has made a decisive impact since rejoining his former world-beating roster Fnatic on Sept. 16. Flusha spoke with Dot Esports following Fnatic’s 2-0 victory over North American favorites Team Liquid at the ESL Pro League finals on Dec. 6.
The former best-in-the-world discussed his team’s strategy behind the victory and their preparation heading into the series. Flusha spoke about the issues in his former lineups and Maikil “Golden” Selims’ re-invigoration of the roster while the Swedish veteran took up the secondary in-game leadership role.
I’m going to start with the veto. Considering you played two of your best maps, Overpass and Inferno, although Team Liquid have performed well on those maps, do you believe you won the veto?
Flusha: We kind of share the same map pool except for overpass and it was obvious what they were going to pick since they beat us last time. And, I feel like they pretty much got their two best maps: Inferno and Mirage. So we were kind of pretty sure, we were like one hundred percent sure what their map picks would be. And, we can’t say we won it, but, we knew exactly what maps and what they’re going to do. We knew everything they were going to do. So, I guess we won in that kind of way.
Your preparation for this map must have been efficient to win in that manner. So was Team Liquid a good opponent to come up against in your current form?
Yeah, especially since we lost to them last week at ECS. So they came back with the same things that they did last time. But they will play Overpass better, which they did. But, yeah, it’s always easier for the losing team to see what went wrong last time. And we kind of showed that their Inferno last time was perfect for them but we saw every weakness of them, what we did wrong, and stuff like that. So, yeah, it was just good for us.
Let’s talk about the first map, Overpass. You had a blistering start to the T-side, what went well for you?
First of all is winning the pistol, the pistol is always a toss up, it’s like fifty-fifty, if we were going to win or not. And then the first gun round, I’m pretty sure we naded [Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken] and I got a kill through the smoke. So yeah it was a good moment in the round. We got two kills that were kind of random and then I think we just kept the momentum and started rolling from then. Obviously, we feel that our Overpass is a lot stronger than theirs. We got off to a good start. It wasn’t like anything we really expected, but we knew that we were better than them.
Near the end of the first half on Overpass, you started to lose momentum. How did you come back into the game after Liquid started to string rounds together?
Obviously, we didn’t really adapt in the T-side when they started winning. Other than that, we knew since the last time that our CT-side was a lot better. And we just knew that if we won one round it’s going to keep coming. And, their T-Side isn’t very deep. So it was obvious where they were going all the time. If they got some entry frags then it would make things harder but I think we just closed it out. We knew what they were going to do.
In regards to your strategy and the team’s dynamic, how does Golden’s tactics differ from in-game leaders in previous iterations?
He has more of a full game plan. Previously, our calls would be at the start of the round but then we would get lost in the mid-round. But, with Golden, he has a full game plan from start to finish. And, if something goes wrong, then I can chime in as well and other players can do it as well. So I think he’s a really good fit for us since he can pretty much do 90 percent and then if something goes wrong, other players can take over. Yeah, I think he’s just a really good fit.
You mentioned that you used to get lost in the mid-round, do you believe that this was a major issue in previous iterations of Fnatic?
In some line lineups, not with [Markus “pronax” Wallsten], obviously. But pretty much every other lineup. So, I feel like I’m really good at being the second in-game leader, helping out the main ones. I think that’s the main role that’s made me and other in-game leaders play really well together and make the team complete since we have a shared duty. And, then those three remaining players just focus on their own.
